Via Campesina at COP17 in Durban: Industrial Agriculture Heats Up the Planet. Farmers Are Cooling It Down!

For Immediate Release

Via Campesina at COP17 in Durban: Industrial Agriculture Heats Up the Planet. Farmers Are Cooling It Down!

MAPUTO - The International Peasant's Movement La Via Campesina will be at the 17th Conference of Parties, the UN summit on Climate Change, that will take place in Durban, South Africa, from the 28th of November to the 9th of December 2011. More than two hundred peasants, women and men, from Africa, Europe, Latin America and Caribe will represent millions of small-scale producers from around the world, practicing agroecology to cool down the Earth.

In Durban, members of La Via Campesina will denounce the industrial agriculture model as one of the main drivers of climate change. We will also expose agribussiness' aggressive land grabbing tactics globally, causing mass displacement of people for monoculture production.

Peasants globally oppose false solutions to climate change, such as monoculture plantations, REDD mechanisms, soil carbon markets, and the so called “Climate Smart Agriculture”, which instead of solving the climate crisis, are heating up the planet.

In Durban, LVC will participate on the Global Day of Action on the 3rd of December, to demand social and climate justice. On the 5th of December, all African peasants movements will celebrate the Agroecology and Food Sovereignty day to Cool Down the Earth, a symbolic manifestation to demand respect for the cause of peasants globally.

Meeting with the press

3rd December
Global Day of Action, during demonstrations, at starting point of the main march

Further

With the toxic Bibi circus in town - cue talk of "tentacles of terror" - find hope in the extraordinary Combatants For Peace, a joint effort by weary Israeli and Palestinian veterans of violence who've laid down their guns to fight for peace. Led by a former IDF soldier and Fatah militant who both lost daughters to the conflict's "unrightable wrongs," they insist on the need to "hear what is painful" and talk to your 'enemies': "Partners for peace always exist. You only have to look for them."